The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3 eBook

Dear Sir, The little leisure I have to-day will,
I trust, excuse my saying very few words in answer
to your obliging letter, of which no part touches
me more than what concerns your health, which, however,
I rejoice to hear is reestablishing itself.

I am sorry I did not save you the trouble of cataloguing
Ames’s beads, by telling you that another person
has actually done it, and designs to publish a new
edition ranged in a different method. I don’t
know the gentleman’s name, but he is a friend
of Sir William Musgrave, from whom I had this information
some months ago.

You will oblige me much by the sight of the volume
you mention. Don’t mind the epigrams you
transcribe on my father. I have been inured
to abuse on him from my birth. It is not a quarter
of an hour ago since, cutting the leaves of a new
dab called Anecdotes of Polite Literature, I found
myself abused for having defended my father.
I don’t know the author, and suppose I never
shall, for I find Glover’s Leonidas is one of
the things he admires—­and so I leave them
to be forgotten together, Fortunati Ambo!

I sent your letter to Ducarel, who has promised me
those poems—­I accepted the promise to get
rid of him t’other day, when he would have talked
me to death.

(214) A distinguished antiquary, better known by the
assistance he gave to others than by publications
of his own. He was vicar of Burnham, in the
county of Bucks; and died December 16th, 1782, in
his sixty-eighth year.-E.

Sir, I should long ago have given myself the pleasure
of writing to you, if I had not been constantly in
hope of accompanying my letter with the Anecdotes
of Painting, etc.; but the tediousness of engraving,
and the roguery of a fourth printer, have delayed
the publication week after week- for months: truly
I do not believe that there is such a being as an
honest printer in the world.

I Sent the books to Mr. Whiston, who, I think you
told me, was employed by you: he answered, he
knew nothing of the matter. Mr. Dodsley has
undertaken now to convey them to you, and I beg your
acceptance of them: it will be a very kind acceptance
if you will tell me of any faults, blunders ,omissions,
etc. as you observe them. In a first sketch
of this nature, I cannot hope the work is any thing
like complete. Excuse, Sir, the brevity Of this.
I am much hurried at this instant of publication,
and have barely time to assure you how truly I am
your humble servant.